No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.